VIRTUAL CHAIN OF UNITY

Task

KOZATSKA RADA approached Cat .Digital with the idea for a contextual promotion for Ukraine's Unity Day back in late 2019. At that time, no one was talking about the coronavirus, and lockdown could only be imagined in the plot of a sci-fi movie. The agency's team rethought the annual Living Chain action and offered to unite Ukraine not in a traditional way - from west to east, across the banks of the Dnipro River, but from north to south - across the occupation border - to support Crimeans and demonstrate Ukrainian unity despite the circumstances.

For obvious reasons, it was impossible to connect Kiev and Simferopol in a living chain. But there are no boundaries on the Internet. So the idea arose to connect the cities with the participants` avatars placed by the principle of a living chain on a detailed satellite map until they connect the capitals of Ukraine and Crimea.

In 2019, the idea inspired the brand KOZATSKA RADA, but the project was postponed. And when they came back to it in 2020, the circumstances were very different, and the virtual chain of unity became even more relevant.

Implementation

The project, which had no analogues either in Ukraine or in the world, faced several challenges at once:

due to the limited timeframe - only two days - there was no margin for technical errors or failures;

the website had to be sufficiently resistant to potential hacker attacks aimed at disrupting the patriotic action;

the platform had to withstand large peak loads, since in order to connect Kyiv and Simferopol with the virtual Chain of Unity, tens of thousands of people were to take part in the action.

To simplify the process of joining the Chain of Unity on the Internet as much as possible, the CF.Digital team developed a website where with authorization through social networks or mail a participant`s avatar appeared on the satellite map of Ukraine. At the same time the site had an unobtrusive native brand style, which, on the one hand, created a connection with the organizer of the action, and on the other hand - did not distract from the main idea.

To gather a core of active users, ready to pick up the initiative from the first minutes, the announcement of the event was launched 2 weeks before the holiday. And access to the site was opened on January 21, the 31st anniversary of the Ukrainian Wave, the first Living Chain of Unity.

One by one the participants` avatars lined up in a chain 1058 kilometers long from Kyiv to Simferopol, 5 times symbolically connecting the banks of the Dnipro River. Almost immediately famous personalities joined the action - one of the first to do so was Liudmila Denysova, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.

Simultaneously with the start of the project, the agency launched a promotional campaign on Facebook, heating up the interest of the audience. The news about the virtual Chain of Unity was picked up by social networks and the media. Participants who had already joined the chain posted screenshots of their location on the map. And since the logo of KOZATSKA RADA was just below the map, it appeared in almost every screenshot shared by the project participants, natively and unobtrusively intertwined in the communication.

The action quickly went viral - and in the evening of January 21, 10 thousand participants had already reached the middle of the route - the city of Dnipro.

On the morning of January 22, the media mentioned the virtual chain in almost every TV story about the Day of Unity. Separate stories about the action were released on 1+1 and ICTV channels. It was supported by famous artists, journalists, politicians, and even institutions: Ukrainian embassies in France and Kenya, as well as the Academy of Internal Affairs. The news about the virtual chain went really viral. Every 3 seconds a new member joined the chain. And already in the morning it was obvious that the chain would reach the planned target number of participants - 20,000 - as early as noon.

The media not only monitored the movement of the chain, but also wrote about its progress. Already at about 2 PM it crossed the mark of 20 thousand participants and the administrative border with Crimea, where hacker attacks began in an attempt to "take down" the site. The developers assumed this course of events, so they additionally strengthened the protection of the platform, which nullified all the attempts of enemies.

The Chain of Unity was mentioned and showed by evening news of these TV channels: 1+1, Ukraine, STB, Inter, ICTV, Channel 5, Channel 24, Crimean Tatar ATR channel and others. Pages with hundreds of thousands of followers on social networks wrote about the action.

Every second a new member joined the chain. Around midnight, the Chain reached its destination, Shevchenko Park in Simferopol, where Ukrainian actions were traditionally held.

The native branding of KOZATSKA RADA was present in every screenshot in social networks, media articles and TV videos, which provided a huge amount of audience contacting with the brand.

And most importantly, in a few days we received hundreds of messages of gratitude from Ukrainians, including Crimean Tatars, for the brand demonstrating its position on the Day of Unity and loudly declaring that Crimea is Ukraine.